Hello, dear Community! I felt compelled to write this guide since I couldn't find a faq on the Net giving a simple rundown of the Rune Skills. It's high time. I know I can count on the dedicated players of this friendly Community (Edit: Oh Yeah! They did answer the call^^). So when needed I will edit this thread and credit you, folks. If you smell what the Croc is cooking…

II] Rune Presentation

Rune, the new Mastery available with the Ragnarök DLC, is like no other. It is a beautiful breath of fresh air in Titan Quest. But Rune being so original, you might sometimes scratch your head trying to figure out the use of some skills. Fear not, friend! This is what this guide is all about.

What makes Rune stand out from other Masteries?

- Rune is the only class that grants you bonuses to Strength, Intelligence, Dexterity and Health. When the Mastery is maxed (32 Skill Points) you earn:

# 32 STR# 64 INT# 48 DEX# 640 HEALTH

- Rune gives you NO bonus to Energy,

- Rune has no Energy Reserved Skills. This may be a choice in game design to address the fact that Rune does not increase your Energy Stat (when climbing up your Mastery),

- Despite what I said above, Rune is a surprisingly efficient Mastery as far as Energy Consumption goes, go figure,

- Runemasters have no living Familiars, but they have Summons: friggin' Stones!

Yeah! Me too I miss the good old Familiar that you could rub behind the ears. But last I checked sane people don’t speak to stones nor do they play fetch with them. ^^ Unless you:

Rune Weapon: this skill tree is a charge type ability that you can assign to your LMB (left mouse Button) or RMB. It works like Onslaught from Warfare Mastery. As a whole Rune Weapon is an essential skill tree.

Transmutation: converts a % of your Weapon Damage into Elemental Damage. This is a one of kind new skill in Titan Quest. Transmutation is also a game-changer, on Normal just putting 1 point into this skill will increase your damage noticeably. EDIT: since Update 1.54 Transmutation is now permanently active (but still requires Rune Weapon).

Sacred Rage is a kind of panic passive skill that triggers when your Health dips below 40%. The main skill buffs you, while Frightening Power -its synergy- debuffs Monsters.

From experience this skill can save your life, and sometimes it won’t (and will die miserably ^^).

Note that the synergy creates a visible red circle around you when it activates: this a good indication that you should drink a red potion or leave the area immediately. ^^

Runeword: Feather

This is a passive that increases your Offensive Ability (in flat numbers) and most importantly reduces the Strength Requirement for All Weapon in %. SHIELDS INCLUDED!!!

This is a very good passive. Also do not mistake this skill with Armor Handling from Defense Mastery, the latter reduces Strength Requirement for Armors and Shields! In other words "Runeword: Feather" does NOT reduce Requirement for Armors!

Rune of Life is an active aura that buffs you or your Allies (Familiars too) for a whopping 10 minutes (600 seconds) regardless of level. This is a solid buff because all the granted bonuses are in %:

Not only Rune of Life is awesome but it stays on like forever. Remember that “the movement Speed” is great when farming or trying to reach distant areas.

Rune of Life has no cooldown! You can cast it liberally on you and your Familiars.

Thunder Strike > Unleash

Rogues have Knives, now Runemasters have Thunder Strike and it’s natsy! You fire 5 projectiles in an arc that deal Elemental Damage and Stun. The Synergy -Unleash- adds Electrical Burn Damage, Skill Disruption and has a chance to confuse Monsters.

Thunder Strike. It is incredibly good against hordes, and just as incredibly good against bosses, who are likely to get hit by most if not all projectiles, provided you're close enough. Combine it with Seal of Fate [note: a Debuff] (and don't forget to warm up with a few Runic Weapon shots) and you'll one-shot virtually anything that's not a final boss. …Now Thunder Strike shoots five projectiles, as its description says. However, if you're dual-wielding thrown weapons, it will net you five projectiles for each weapon you're holding! That's a lot of daggers or axes at the same time. And Reckless Offense [note: this skill allows Runemasters to dual wield weapons] itself pays off as well, I found.

Like many of the skills of Rune Mastery, Thunder Strike only show its worth when you unlock its synergy, Unleash.

You cannot reduce the cooldown -fixed 7 seconds- of Thunderstrike no matter how many Skill Points you pour into the Skill. So “- Recharge” from items/artifacts are your best friends.

Runic Mines is a curious Spell which you will learn to love or hate depending on your play-style and the Monsters you’re facing.

The base skill, Runic Mines, surrounds you with a few booby traps which stay on the spot for a few seconds. You cannot choose where to throw them, they emerge just around you.

Without investing into its synergy -Freezing Mines- this skill is underwhelming. Freezing Mines ads some welcome: Frostburn Damage, Slow and a chance of Freeze.

The trick to use this skill effectively is to lead your targets into your traps. Some Monsters are very likely to fall for that ruse, especially those nasty melee Monsters who hunt you down.

Ex: Automatoi (golden constructs) are easy prey for your Runic Mines, just dance them around to lead them to your minefield.

Menhir Wall > Guardian Stones

By watching at the skill tree you might think Guardian Stones is just the synergy (an enhancement) of Menhir Wall, well this is quite far from the truth. When unlocked, both skills have their own Icons and can be summoned independently. So you can have both Menhir Wall and Guardian Stones at the same time on the Battlefield!

So why did developers put it like it was a synergy? Maybe because both skills are Stones? Or maybe because it is more pretty on the skill tree? Anyways the visual aspect is anecdotal, what counts is how those Skills work and if they are any good for us:

First Guardian Stones -unlike Menhir Wall- CANNOT go through terrain. Also be watchful when you cast it in enclosed areas (doors and choke points): if badly cast you can possibly summon 2 Stones instead of the normal 3. So in order to avoid this always throw them in the middle of a room.

This is one monster of a skill that has only one drawback but a serious one: the cooldown of this skill is 4 minutes (240 sec)! Apart from that the damage output of these 3 stones is surreal, those who never tried this skill have no idea:

- The Giant Limos (Act I Side Quest "Trapped in the Ruins"): I killed that Limos in less than 10 seconds!! With just Guardian Stones and a few knives thrown into the mix. Without charms, relics nor Debuffs whatsoever. Between you and me: that was TOO fast. ^^

The 3 Gorgons: same deal. If you lead them near the Guardian Stones, they will fall in no time,

And if you add the Runic Mines into the equation (see above) it gets even more crazy.

Conclusion: do not underestimate Guardian Stones! To give you another perspective for this Skill just remember that Guardian Stones are as powerful as the Outsider from the Spirit Mastery! Both Summons have actually a lot in common:

# both are unlocked at the highest level of their respective Mastery (LV32),# both are temporary Summons,# both deal Elemental Damage and Health Reduction in %. This is what makes those Summons so devastating, # both have a very long cooldown (Outsider: 6 min / Guardian Stones: 4 min)

The only real difference is that Guardian Stones are static whereas the Outsider is a walking apocalypse.

Note: since Cooldown Reduction now caps at 80% you can expect to reduce the cooldown of Guardian Stones from "4 minutes" to "48 seconds" at best.

I don’t understand this skill...Seriously I need the opinion of the Community on this one.

EDIT: Veterans heeded my plea. ^^ Here's what Malgardian, Firebrand, Vio and botebote77 said about "Runeword: Explode" and its synergy. My Goodness! This is actually a pretty good Skill:

Quote

Malgardian: I personally like Runeword: Explode on my Elemental Archer as it's a nice replacement for Scattershot if you're not using hunting. At least in normal its damage is quite good, so that you can kill a few enemies at once.

Firebrand:There's one thing I'd point out about Runeword: Burn, and that is that it has an area of effect whenever it triggers. All damage it and its synergy deal indeed work well together with Earth, but personally I think the real deal is that it makes your attack (and yes, that includes every property of your attack) affect multiple enemies.

And that's an incredibly useful bonus, even if the extra physical, fire, and burn damages are negligible. You have attack damage converted to health? Neat, now you heal double or triple the amount. You have energy leech? Say hello to a full energy bar! Flat elemental damage? Flat elemental explosion, more like. What's a better thing than slowing melee monsters charging at you? The answer is slowing a whole group of melee enemies charging at you! (Hint: You can have all four of those of those just from the Rune Weapon tree.)

Another little thing is its subtle synergy with Reckless Offense: the chance for Runeword: Explode to trigger applies to both projectiles shot by Reckless Offense. And I think it's a nice touch.

botebote77: runeword:explode also works on melee...it's effective actually because at melee range, mobs gather around you closely and when it procs, you hit multiple monsters... there are no projectiles on melee weapons though so there are also no fragments

This is a passive skill that allows you to dual wield weapons. Take note that this skill is not limited to throwing knives or darts, you can dual wield swords, maces or axes too.

When the skill activates you also get the following bonus: +100% Total Damage. Vio, Bless his Soul ^^, added this:

Quote

Vio: Reckless Offense, like other Dual Wield skills, gives a chance to use a special animation (throwing three projectiles quickly or doing four hits in melee) while also granting its damage bonus. The bonus only applies when the attack triggers. As always, really.

You will need to invest a few Skill Points and have +Skills (granted by items) to really benefit from this excellent skill.

Runeword: Absorb

"Enchant a shield or a staff with the ability to absorb the energy of enemy…"

Thanks to Veteran Vio the use of this Skill has been finally understood:

Quote

Vio: Runeword: Absorb is the tanky alternative to Reckless Offense. It gives you Energy when you get hit, which in turn fuels the Energy-hungry shield. So it is quite good in combination with other damage mitigation or/and -% Energy Cost.

Seal of Fate: the main skill is a decent debuff against Monsters. Good but doesn’t hold a candle to its lovely synergy,

Aftershock: now we’re talking! This beauty debuffs Monsters hard, it reduces their Resistances. Also the % Chance of Impaired Aim is a boon against Archers!

The only real drawback of "Seal of Fate > Aftershock" is the relatively limited area of the debuff (4 meters). The debuff zone does NOT increase not matter how many Skills Points you put into the skills. So this is mostly single target (Bosses, Heroic Monsters, dense mobs, etc). Even so you’ll be happy to have it because Monsters go down noticeably faster when they are under the effect of “Seal of Fate > Aftershock”.

Energy Armor

An aura that buffs you and your Allies (Familiars too). 5 Meter Radius / 25 Seconds cooldown. After a certain threshold of Damage is absorbed "Energy Armor" will vanish.

Effects: Damage Absorption (flat number but very high when the skill is maxed!) / Resistance to Physical-Piercing-Bleeding-Stun!!

A worthy skill. Some might complain that you have to cast it regularly but honestly this no big deal. Because those Resists are a Godsend. Personally I always cast "Energy Armor" and "Rune of Life" at the same time. When both are up I feel safe.

Now when Energy Armor is taken down by Monsters (which will happen I can assure you) then I can narrow down what kind of Damage I’m taking. This skill, like Rune of Life, is invaluable.

The casting radius of Energy Armor is limited to 5 meters, but from the moment you've cast it on your nearby Familiars -it works on them too- the Spell will latch on to them even when they rush afar to kill stuff in Aggressive Mode. The Spell will also vanish after the listed Damage has been sustained.

- Firebrand good things always come in 3! For detailing his way to counter the high cost of "Energy Armor",

- botebote77 for his info on "Transmutation" since v1.54 / the fact that "Energy Drain" has an impact on "Throwing Knives" / that the tooltip of"Rune of Life" has been corrected on Ragnarök Calculator / then his Skinchanger Petmaster Thread

I sincerely hope the guide helped. I felt Beginners who might want a basic rundown of the Rune Mastery might need a faq like this one. Rune Mastery is still relatively undocumented right now. I humbly hope you enjoyed the read.

Finally thank you Reader for taking the time to browse the whole Guide, The Croc says you deserve a little something, what about a Haïku Poem? :

I thought reckless offense had only a small chance to deal 100% extra damage with each attack.

Seal of fate is a good skill for normal, because its damage is very high when you max it and it has a short cooldown, if you spam that and thunder strike you wont even need to attack manually. Its only drawback is that after normal act 3 you start to notice that the damage alone is not enough, you need to cast it and then attack.

Rune is an interesting mastery, i personally didnt like runesmith very much, because with runes you need tactical gameplay and cannot be a crazy tank that runs in and destroys relying on defense alone. Im now in act 4 normal, the damage is ok because of decent weapons, i will try your suggestion about menhir wall and the other stones. I think if you want a pure tank runesmith wont cut it, there are better options such as warfare hunting dream and nature, but its still an interesting combo with defense. I have yet to try runes with another mastery, so i cannot comment on that.

I personally like Runeword: Explode on my Elemental Archer as it's a nice replacement for Scattershot if you're not using hunting. At least in normal its damage is quite good, so that you can kill a few enemies at once.

Thanks for the summary! It was an interesting read. I'm glad if I made a little impact at least.

There's one thing I'd point out about Runeword: Burn, and that is that it has an area of effect whenever it triggers. All damage it and its synergy deal indeed work well together with Earth, but personally I think the real deal is that it makes your attack (and yes, that includes every property of your attack) affect multiple enemies.

And that's an incredibly useful bonus, even if the extra physical, fire, and burn damages are negligible. You have attack damage converted to health? Neat, now you heal double or triple the amount. You have energy leech? Say hello to a full energy bar! Flat elemental damage? Flat elemental explosion, more like. What's a better thing than slowing melee monsters charging at you? The answer is slowing a whole group of melee enemies charging at you! (Hint: You can have all four of those of those just from the Rune Weapon tree.)

Another little thing is its subtle synergy with Reckless Offense: the chance for Runeword: Explode to trigger applies to both projectiles shot by Reckless Offense. And I think it's a nice touch.

Reckless offense, like other Dual Wield skills, gives a chance to use a special animation (throwing three projectiles quickly or doing four hits in melee) while also granting its damage bonus.

And yes, Runeword: Explode makes your main attack an AoE much like Ternion's Arcane Lore does.

Finally Runeword: Absorb is the tanky alternative to Reckless Offense. It gives you Energy when you get hit, which in turn fuels the Energy-hungry shield. So it is quite good in combination with other damage mitigation or/and -% Energy Cost.

But I'm not sure I understand what you said about Reckless Offense. The only thing I need to know is this:

Is the +100% Total Damage granted by the Skill a General, All-Time Bonus OR a bonus that only triggers when Reckless Offense triggers (as I wrote in the guide).

Thanks in advance and sorry for the hassle. ^^

Also I’ve added 4 notable facts into the Guide:

Rune of Life can be cast on Familiars too,

Rune of Life has no cooldown!,

Energy Armor: The casting radius of Energy Armor is limited to 5 meters, but from the moment you've cast it on your nearby Familiars -it works on them too- the Spell will latch on to them even when they rush afar to kill stuff in Agressive Mode. The Spell will also vanish after the listed Damage has been sustained,

So I finally took the time to look for Rune Builds on the boards. I haven't found a gazillion of them (yet), but still I indexed those I found. If you find any other build please do chime in this thread. And sorry for the delay:

Hello! Today I addressed an oversight that was still lingering on the guide. But to my dismay there is no more room on post 1!

This edit is quite critical because I forgot to talk about a very important quirk of the "Energy Armor" Skill.

Since there is no more room on Post 1, a link will direct here. So about what I added today:

A] Energy Armor Part II

You can’t possibly talk about Energy Armor without bringing up its "terrifying"^^ Energy Cost Progression. Beginners might not realize this when Energy Armor is only Level 1. But from the moment you've raised the Skill, you'll have one nasty surprise:

So what does that mean? It implies that if you raise this Skill, you'll usually won’t have the required Energy Pool to cast it! How to counter this serious limitation? There are actually a few ways to make this skill work for you:

1) Green Items

some of them are dedicated to increase your Energy Pool in %. Look especially for greens like Plato’s Rings and later Socrates Rings,

2) Blues/Purples

Credits goes to Firebrand for the majority of the following list, thanks for the help, mate! :

6) Energy Attribute: investing directly into the Energy Attribute is a solid choice too. Indeed since the Anniversary Edition putting a single point into Energy (or Health) nets you 40 Points (by comparison it was 25 Points in original Titan Quest). So unlike good old Diablo 2 where putting points into Energy was a big no-no (for most builds), assigning 10 points into Energy (or more) is a solid option in Titan Quest AE.

EDIT: read the following post by Firebrand detailing his way to counter the high cost of "Energy Armor", this is just the next post below mine hey (here)

You can have a few items in your inventory dedicated to casting Energy Armor; those included the list in the post above. However, personally I found a method that I think is much less of a hassle and works more seamlessly.

With my Stonespeaker, I use my secondary weapon set for Energy Armor. My primary is two Chakrams of the Sun; when Energy Armor goes down, after battle's over, I switch to secondary, wait for energy to recharge, use Energy Armor, and switch back to primary. Due to the inherent energy gained from investing skill points into Earth, I didn't need to put attribute points into it at all (in fairness, though, I use a few more items with energy cost reduction, but if you're using Rune, both Völva's Foot Leather and Polaris are excellent choices even not counting the cost reduction).

The obvious choice is the Golden Shield of Pelaron. Other than the massive energy cost reduction and energy bonus, this also boosts your energy regeneration, so it might be a good choice to switch to in the breaks between battles to save some energy potions if you're not finding enough (plus you can cast Energy Shield sooner). The weapon I use currently for this task is Chakram of the Moon for its fixed +300 energy bonus, but I believe there might be better alternatives (Arcadion Judgement, Iris, Lykaion Malleus, Nubian Spear, and Spear of Tuthmosis III are the only five one-handed weapons with energy cost reduction, and the spears are usually less plausible for a Rune character for the lack of dexterity).

Overall, it's my preferred method - no need to keep extra items in your inventory, to enter the character screen and switch them around. Just switch weapons, wait a bit (or drink a potion if you're impatient), apply Energy Armor and go back to fight. (If you're using a throwing weapon or are brave enough with a melee one, you can attack some enemies with your backup to take advantage of Rune Weapon's massive energy leech to fill up your energy bar as well.)

My mistake, in the Titan Quest database they go by Völva's Hardened Wraps. (Some items seem to be named differently in the game and in TQVault, does anyone know why?) Pretty amazing item, if you ask me, either way.

Little thing on Golden Shield of Pelaron: Other than the energy cost reduction, it also provides a flat bonus to energy (the database says +250, but it's random), and also +10 energy regeneration per second (which doesn't help you cast Energy Armor per se but it sure helps recovering your energy afterwards).